GOP tax bill would ease regulations on gun silencers and some rifles and shotguns
GOP tax bill would ease regulations on gun silencers and some rifles and shotguns (Image: AP)
WASHINGTON: The massive tax and spending cuts package that President Donald Trump wants on his desk by July 4 would loosen regulations on gun silencers and certain types of rifles and shotguns, advancing a long time priority of the gun industry as Republican leaders in the House and Senate try to win enough votes to pass the bill.
The guns provision was first requested in the House by Georgia Rep. Andrew Clyde, a Republican gun store owner who had initially opposed the larger tax package. The House bill would remove silencers - called "suppressors" by the gun industry - from a 1930s law that regulates firearms that are considered the most dangerous, eliminating a $200 tax while removing a layer of background checks.
The Senate kept the provision on silencers in its version of the bill and expanded upon it, adding short-barreled, or sawed-off, rifles and shotguns.
Republicans who have long supported the changes, along with the gun industry, say the tax infringes on Second Amendment rights. They say silencers are mostly used by hunters and target shooters for sport.
"Burdensome regulations and unconstitutional taxes shouldn't stand in the way of protecting American gun owners' hearing," said Clyde, who owns two gun stores in Georgia and often wears a pin shaped like an assault rifle on his suit lapel.
Democrats are fighting to stop the provision, which was unveiled days after two Minnesota state legislators were shot in their homes, as the bill speeds through the Senate. They argue that loosening regulations on silencers could make it easier for criminals and active shooters to conceal their weapons.
"Parents don't want silencers on their streets, police don't want silencers on their streets," said Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer, D-NY
The gun language has broad support among Republicans and has received little attention as House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La, and Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-SD, work to settle differences within the party on cuts to Medicaid and energy tax credits, among other issues.
But it is just one of hundreds of policy and spending items included to entice members to vote for the legislation that could have broad implications if the bill is enacted within weeks, as Trump wants.
Inclusion of the provision is also a sharp turn from the climate in Washington just three years ago when Democrats, like Republicans now, controlled Congress and the White House and pushed through bipartisan gun legislation.
The bill increased background checks for some buyers under the age of 21, made it easier to take firearms from potentially dangerous people and sent millions of dollars to mental health services in schools.
Passed in the summer of 2022, just weeks after the shooting of 19 children and two adults at a school in Uvalde, Texas, it was the most significant legislative response to gun violence in decades.
Three years later, as they try to take advantage of their consolidated power in Washington, Republicans are packing as many of their long time priorities as possible, including the gun legislation, into the massive, wide-ranging bill that Trump has called "beautiful."
"I'm glad the Senate is joining the House to stand up for the Second Amendment and our Constitution, and I will continue to fight for these priorities as the Senate works to pass President Trump's One Big Beautiful Bill," said Texas Sen John Cornyn, who was one of the lead negotiators on the bipartisan gun bill in 2022 but is now facing a primary challenge from the right in his bid for re-election next year.
If the gun provisions remain in the larger legislation and it is passed, silencers and the short-barrel rifles and shotguns would lose an extra layer of regulation that they are subject to under the National Firearms Act, passed in the 1930s in response to concerns about mafia violence.
They would still be subject to the same regulations that apply to most other guns - and that includes possible loopholes that allow some gun buyers to avoid background checks when guns are sold privately or online.
Larry Keane of the National Shooting Sports Foundation, who supports the legislation, says changes are aimed at helping target shooters and hunters protect their hearing. He argues that the use of silencers in violent crimes is rare.
"All it's ever intended to do is to reduce the report of the firearm to hearing safe levels," Keane says.
Speaking on the floor before the bill passed the House, Rep Clyde said the bill restores Second Amendment rights from "over 90 years of draconian taxes." Clyde said Johnson included his legislation in the larger bill "with the purest of motive."
"Who asked for it? I asked," said Clyde, who ultimately voted for the bill after the gun silencer provision was added.
Clyde was responding to Rep Maxwell Frost, a 28-year-old Florida Democrat, who went to the floor and demanded to know who was responsible for the gun provision. Frost, who was a gun-control activist before being elected to Congress, called himself a member of the "mass shooting generation" and said the bill would help "gun manufacturers make more money off the death of children and our people."
Among other concerns, control advocates say less regulation for silencers could make it harder for law enforcement to stop an active shooter.
"There's a reason silencers have been regulated for nearly a century: They make it much harder for law enforcement and bystanders to react quickly to gunshots," said John Feinblatt, president of Everytown for Gun Safety.
Schumer and other Democrats are trying to convince the Senate parliamentarian to drop the language as she reviews the bill for policy provisions that aren't budget-related.
"Senate Democrats will fight this provision at the parliamentary level and every other level with everything we've got," Schumer said earlier this month.
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